Philly Future

February 27, 2006

Between the ages of eight and twelve or so, I played a shitload of my single favorite game, no, not a video game [although Mike Tyson's Punch Out was probably a close second], but Dungeons & Dragons. To nitpick a little, I was actually playing Advanced Dungeons & Dragons; I can't recall what the real difference between the two was/is more than a decade later though. I haven't played since, but I still very much still have all my dice which may still worry Joey Sweeney. From d4 through d100, I got 'em.

And earlier today, I read this NY Times article on how D&D is about to go online. At first I said Nooooooo! But then I thought of all the knock offs that are already online. All those sim games are derivative of D&D. The one that sticks out the most, and the one that has gobbled up dozens of hours of my life, is Final Fantasy. The original Nintendo game which is now on Play Station and is set for it's thirteenth or so iteration. I'm gonna buy it up and not be heard from for many hours when that happens. But then I thought that while all these derivative games were out there already, D&D was different in that it was always a pencil and paper game and never was simply a video incarnation of a role-playing game.

Transforming that analog/organic pencil and paper game online, that's just about impossible. There's some form of the gathering of friends around a table with masses of dice and junk food that cannot be transferred online, call it, say, the organic geek quotient. Something about the clack of the die as it hits the table and rolls around. The eager looks of anticipation on your teammates' faces as the dungeon master reads aloud a scenario. Stephen Colbert knows what I'm talking about. So does Vin Diesel [so does Vin Diesel?!].

February 13, 2006

So does Marc Ecko. Big time fashion designer Ecko is coming out with a new video game centering on graffiti. Interesting. I remember the big fuss over his cancelled block party last year in NYC:

NEW YORK Last summer, the celebrated urban-wear designer Marc Ecko wanted to throw a block party to promote his new video game. The problem? "Getting Up," in stores this week, is all about graffiti.

Local pols were upset.

Peter Vallone Jr., a Queens councilman, led the outcry, asking the city to revoke the permit for a bash that would allow graffiti artists -- or "graffiti vandals," as Vallone calls them -- to strut their stuff on 48-foot-long replicas of subway cars that ran in New York in the '80s. The event, Vallone argued, would encourage vandalism. Mayor Michael Bloomberg agreed, noting that "graffiti is just one of those things that destroys our quality of life." Things got ugly. The city revoked the soiree's permit; Ecko sued the city; lofty talk about censorship and freedom of expression was tossed around.

Then Judge Jed Rakoff of the U.S. District Court in Manhattan ruled in favor of Ecko. In his decision, Rakoff wrote: "By the same token, presumably, a street performance of 'Hamlet' would be tantamount to encouraging revenge murder. . . . As for a street performance of 'Oedipus Rex,' don't even think about it."

And now, the game is finally coming out. I doubt I'll pick it up, but I'm happy it's going to be out there.

January 03, 2006

The NY Times tells me that my people are soooo cool and that China's youth, hundreds of millions strong, all wanna be us. Who's the real Slim Shady?

"We know that the products at Korea City are made in China," said Wang Ying, 28, who works for the local branch of an American company. "But to many young people, 'Korea' stands for fashionable or stylish. So they copy the Korean style."

December 09, 2005

I couldn't believe this when I read it. The NY Times is reporting on a new cottage industry out of China, the outsourcing of video game playing! Fuck Shit Fuck Shit! I've heard of people trading codes and files over message boards, forums and even eBay for games to get certain things, but China's fully commercialized it. Fucking lazy fucks who can't get good enough at a game so they have to pay other people to beat a level for them? Who are these lazy fucks and where are they getting the excess money to spend on an excess expense of video games?

When I was growing up, I grew up on 4-bit Atari then leapfrogged to 8-bit Nintendo. Then came 16-bit Super Nintendo and I think Sega Genesis was also 16-bit. Turbo Grafix was somewhere along the time of SNES and Genesis at 32-bit, I think. And of course Sega Saturn came along with Nintendo64 for the next levels of gaming. And then Sony got in the game with PlayStation and now Mircosoft and their $500M lbs. gorilla XBox.

I loved those dinky games of yore and I even bought an 8-bit NES in college so I could play games like Punch-Out [didn't find Mike Tyson's when I bought the NES, remember they dropped him after the rape charges?], Dr. Mario [I'm the fucking king of Dr. Mario, all challengers are welcome to kiss my ass] and various editions of Mario Bros. - and it's pronounced Mah-rio not Mau-rio dammit. When things got complicated, I did what we all did, stayed up until 4a figuring the shit out. Eventually, things got really complicated and cheat books were made. I must admit, that since buying Sony PS2 several years ago, I've bought my fare share of cheat books, but I haven't PAID SOMEONE to do the work for me! Good god. What is this world coming to.

It takes me many playing hours to go through games like Metal Gear Solid and Final Fantasy X, but I love it. I'm a vido game geek on a lower level, but a video game geek nevertheless. So who wants to pay me to beat Final Fantasy X2 whent it comes out and then give them the memory card with the final sequence on it so you can show your friends the ending sequence and claim it was "All me"? Pony up, bitches.

April 12, 2005

An interesting article via NY Times about how a chess grandmaster, Maurice Ashley, is teaching teaching to teachers through chess strategy, forcing them to think outside of the boxes they are comfortable with.

But what Mr. Ashley had to say about chess on this night was more academic. Literally. "A lot of times in education we try to teach kids the one right answer and that leads, in my opinion, to robotic thinking," he told the players, encouraging them to think of multiple possible moves before choosing the best play. "Real life isn't like that. Is there ever one right answer? Generating alternatives for the sake of alternatives is a good thing."

It seems like a pretty interesting class to take for teachers to push themselves. I used to play chess when I was much younger, mostly in summer day camp. Yeah, I was nerdy. But then I'd go and play soccer for the rest of the day. Yeah, I was a jock too. I liked playing chess, but I never really wanted to take the time to learn strategies and gambits and whatnot. I was too busy running around I guess.

February 14, 2005

The first thing I noticed about Stikes Bowling Lounge is that it's a pretty large space. From the outside, it is pretty imposing. It's a good three stories tall and it extends from Locust to Irving. Once inside, I noticed how very high the ceilings are. And I also felt that it felt a little empty inside because of all that space. They definitely need to do something with all that space. Put in a disco ball to spread the light around or something. I think they could've even put two floors of bowling in, but that would've taken awhile to put together I presume.

Now let me explain entrance to this place so you don't get too confused when you go there yourself. It costs $10 to get in [Thurs - Sat 6p - 2a]. But don't panic. While it may seem like a cover charge, it isn't. You immediately get $10 in coupons to use while inside for the duration of your visit. Drinks, pool, food, bowling: whatever you want, it's like real money. The reason they "charge" the $10 is to keep all them Drexel and Penn kids from just sticking around and not spending money inside and hanging out. Once you pay that $10 to get in, they could care less if you buy anything with your coupon. And also, they have a whole set of student rates. If you're a student or have a student ID from somewhere else and have since moved to Philly, bring it. Everything is discounted except for food and drink. Admission with student ID is $5. I still have my old ID and carry it around with me for just the occassion. Oh my Asian skin will do me good well to my 30s methinks.

That's a shot of the bar area. Notice all that blue light, eh? Their lighting system is rigged with blue, green and red flourescent lights which change from one to another sporadically throughout the night. It takes some getting used to and I didn't care for it at all. As for the prices of drinks, they range from $2 PBRs to $8 mixed drinks. They do have specials every single day though, so you can save some monmey that way. And if you wanna use your coupons here, they don't give change so keep that in mind while ordering your drinks. None of us had any food so can't comment on taste nor prices.

That's a shot of one of the guys who works there in the pin pen. I was looking through the window and exclaimed "I've never seen the pin moneys at work before" speaking of the mechanical pin monkeys. He heard me say it and replied "Wanna see a pin monkey at work?" and opened a door and stepped in. I guess he had to go in there to fix something and I was there to watch. It was pretty cool. Crazy to think that that used to be a job, manually resetting the pins.

That's a shot of the inbetween area. This is taken from the front area looking towards the loungey area with the bar to the right and I think five more bowling lanes to the left through that opening. It was all pretty wide open. And no smoking!!!! Woo hoo!

And here's a shot of two of the four or five pool tables. These are in the front room across from the register/shoe check. But enough of the tour, on to the bowling!

Here's a shot of their new-fangled scoring thingie. I remarked that I remembered the days of yore when one had to hand score the game with a pen and pencil. I remember getting the big bowling scorecards from the bowling dude behind the counter and lugging it to our lane and spreading it over the scorer's table and trying not to spill all our crap on it. I remember it progressing to the transparencies that were projected over our lane so that everyone in the alley could see how crappy you were. Then it went to the type-in-your-names method and optional score override. That caused many an argument. And now, these. A 21 or so inch touchscreen LCD panel complete with funny/corny graphics whenever you strike, spare or gutter.

There are four lanes in the front room by Locust St and I think five or six more in the back on the Irving St side. There was plenty of room for our party of four and the other groups of 5+ around us. Lots of loungey low cushioned double-stools and two sets of tables for each lane. They planned that very well. Almost too much room. I lead the way the first game with a 123, but slowed down instead of heating up the second game and ended with a 99. Kudos to Jodi for kicking some butt in the second game and knocking down 165 or so. But she went to bowling daycamp as a kid we all learned. Heh.

But now, onto the pricing:

But if you can't read that, here it is in .pdf. And I just spent the last half hour recreating this stupid thing for your benefit so if you jack it, please give me some credit. And these prices are as of February 12th 2005 so if they're different when you head on over there, don't blame my ass!

I just did the math for the four of us. For four "cover charges" plus two games of bowling apiece, on a Saturday night after 10p all with student IDs, it comes out to $67.28, but we only got charged $60 for some reason. If we didn't have IDs, the cost would've been $82.24. That's quite a difference.

So there you have it, my review of this new bowling alley, the first one in Philly in ten years I'm told. All in all, good company leads to good times. Grab a few buddies and go have a bowl.

January 14, 2005

January 13, 2005

Tonight is poker night with some folks from the office. Today is also payday. A bad combination. But you can't say that you don't have the cash to play. Let's see how my Texas Hold 'Em stands up tonight.